10-The Abrahamic Covenant

Infant baptisers support their practice of infant baptism by
arguments based on the Old Testament Abrahamic covenant,
those promises which God made to Abraham concerning his
physical seed. 1 They apply these promises to the church, 2 by
which they mistakenly – incredibly – mean believers and their
children. In this way, the circumcision of Israelite boys comes to
be replaced by the baptism of infants who are born in families
where the father or the mother, or both, are Christians (or
nominally so). The promises of the Abrahamic covenant are
applied to such children.
This is totally unwarranted. Unwarranted, it may be – it is! –
even so, it does not lack, what seems to many, an impressive
theology to buttress it. But... let us see how well this ‘impressive’
theology stands up.